And for one terrifying second, I saw the nineteen-year-old boy I loved behind the face of the forty-year-old billionaire sitting across from me.
Same grey eyes.
Same small scar above the eyebrow.
Same habit of clenching his jaw when he was confused.
I whispered a name I hadn’t spoken in twenty years.
– Alex?
Her face changed.
Full.
The cold billionaire is gone.
Her lips parted.
No one spoke.
Then he whispered:
“Who told you that name?”
I started crying.
And that was all the confirmation I needed.
Twenty years earlier, I had been nineteen.
Alexander turned twenty.
We were young, broken, reckless, and completely convinced that love could solve everything.
His father owned a small construction company.
My mother cleaned houses for wealthy families.
We had no money.
But we had plans.
We were supposed to leave Chicago together.
We had everything sorted out.
Cheap apartment.
Two bus tickets.
The future we thought was ours.
Then, the evening before we left, Alexander called me.
His voice was strange.
He told me not to go out.
He told me someone was watching him.
And then he said something I will never forget.
“If anything happens to me, don’t trust my father.”
This was our last conversation.
The next morning Alexander was gone.
His car was found near the river.
